I filmed this nearly a year ago. I am publishing now because I have taken the time I needed to get the answers I was seeking. I prioritized my privacy in processing the feelings I was having. I protected myself first. It is currently about 18 months since I went off the gender-affirming menstrual suppression (GAMS) hormones. I am ready now to discuss this publicly.
I discussed the issue of hormone treatments and bone density at my talk for the SF Peninsula Republican Assembly on July 1st, 2023. I would like to again thank them very sincerely for hosting me and giving me the opportunity to expand on the points I brought up at SF GOP Parental Rights Night last May (the one Soleil Ho wrote about and Joy Reid boosted). These caring people encouraged me to follow up on my health concerns surrounding gender affirming menstrual suppression with Depo Provera and Mirena IUD. This was still an uphill battle.
It really did help to have the encouragement when going back to my doctor and insisting on a test they were telling me I was too young to need. This is a test they do not usually give to women under 65 unless they have a risk factor, and even then they are reluctant to give it to women under 50. My primary doctor ordered it because I did have a risk factor and was reporting chronic pain in load-bearing joints. The risk factor was Depo Provera. They gave me a DEXA scan to see what damage gender-affirming menstrual suppression hormones did to me. DEXA just takes a few minutes and looks at your lower back and left hip. I took this test last week and the same day, I was diagnosed with early-onset osteopenia.
Normal bone density is a score between -1.0 to +1.0. Mild osteopoenia is -1.0 to -1.49. Moderate osteopoenia is -1.5 to -1.99. Advanced osteopoenia is -2.0 to -2.49. And osteoporosis is -2.5 and below. I can apparently feel where I am more and less osteopenic.
I just turned 37. If I had waited until age 50, they could have blamed this result on menopause. In my opinion, they should have done this scan before putting me on the drug. I followed their recommendations regarding calcium supplementation and exercise, and have documentation of that. It was not enough to prevent this iatrogenic harm.
I will repeat the test in 3 years. I am hopeful that the return of my estrogen cycles will strengthen my bones between now and then. I do not know if it is worsening, improving, or staying the same. Any way you want to slice it, however, I have measurable scars, in the form of atrophy and demineralization, as a result of gender-affirming care. I also reported other atrophic symptoms to my prescribing doctor at the time, and he prescribed additional treatments that did not work well. Later, I encountered on the Boston Children’s Hell panel, doctors pushing the idea that the treatments my doctor prescribed for this predictable complication would be enough for other girls being “transitioned.” I know they are inadequate. I continue to experience these effects. Other detransitioned women may know to which I allude. I thought I would bounce back. In some ways I did, yet in other ways, I did not.
As a result of the Depo Provera, I also developed moderate cystic acne that was significant enough it needed to be treated with a drug called minocycline, an antibiotic. Dr. Mangubat here explains that he prescribes it for patients on gender-affirming hormone treatments that worsen acne, because acne can delay top $urgery. You may remember Dr. Mangubat for selling breast removal to 15 year old girls. Minocycline stains your bones and teeth black. I was not warned about this either! Minocycline also further slows the growth of bones. Great choice to pair it with a drug that affects the density of bones. Anything to get that 15 year old on your table faster. Cha-ching!
I appreciate the detransitioners who reached out to me to validate my medical maltreatment and reassure me that menstrual suppression is an established part of gender-affirming care, with overlapping consequences to the other hormonal tomfoolery indulged in the name of appeasing the whims of the gender gremlins. Now I want to better understand what was done to me in the name of making me able to perform gender effluvially. I will continue to share my Homer-with-the-crayon-up-his-nose’s Odysee with you all as I document my research day by day.
I have questions which seem to be a common issue with people whose HPG-axis was chemically suppressed during critical developmental windows. Depo’s bone density impact is more significant the younger you are when you start taking it, regardless of how long you take it for. Sometimes the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. (Omar Khayyam) There is no unringing the bell, and my bell - my brain and body - was rung by these drugs. I can still hear the echoes cascading through the last 15 years of my life.
Depo Provera is a form of progesterone that is given as a shot every 3 months. This injection suppresses the function of the hypothalamus and pituitary glands in the brain, similarly to lupron-based puberty blockers. It suppresses production of the hormones Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), Luteinizing Hormone (LH), Testosterone, Progesterone (cyclical) and Estrogen. This results in lack of ovulation, and cessation of menstruation. Women, trans or not, are told, with a straight face, that if we are not actively trying to become pregnant, we “don’t need” our periods.
Sometimes, this is justified with reference to the fact that many animals don’t have periods. Well, many animals don’t have higher cognitive faculties that humans have, either. Our higher cognitive-linguistic faculties apparently evolved in tandem with our menstrual cycles. Perhaps there is, therefore, some connection between the health and maintenance of these two bodily systems.
Progestins can trigger the development of secondary conditions such as melasma. Melasma is a condition where patchy areas of discoloration appear on the face due to excessive melanin production by melanocytes. It is often called the “mask of pregnancy” because the extended progesterone exposure is known to trigger it. Compared to my parents and sibling, I inherited a darker complexion. This made it more likely that this drug would trigger melasma. I was not warned of this possibility prior to starting the medication, even though I was given this warning when recently seeking consultation regarding laser scar treatment.
As a result of lack of informed consent, when I developed melasma, I thought it was my fault. The prescribing doctor, as well as other providers I saw, failed to notice it, even though it was literally written all over my face. It was not diagnosed until the holy and omnibeneficent Tiktok algorithm served me an ad for Musely. This ad explained that melasma exists, has a name, and is treatable. I felt that I had caused myself premature aging by not being sufficiently diligent with sunscreen, when in fact I was experiencing a predictable, common and highly treatable medication-induced side-effect that is more common in people of certain ethnic backgrounds.
Progesterone was also shown to inhibit neural aromatization of testosterone into estrogen in rats. Mirena IUD, often claimed to only act locally, has also been linked to the serious complication also linked to lupron: pseudotumor cerebri. I do not believe it can cause brain complications by acting locally on the uterus. What a hysterical claim.
When I switched from the hormone shot to the hormone IUD, this required undergoing a minor surgery in which a device called a tenaculum was used, without real informed consent. This tool pierced my cervix, in order to ‘stabilize’ it for the insertion. The existence of the tenaculum is something I had to again learn from my lord and personal saviour, Chinese Spyware Clock App, after being gaslit by providers that they were just “pinching” me and that it should not cause me any pain. If you have never seen one, this is a tenaculum
and this is how it is used on cervical tissue (top, versus modern alternative below).
The tenaculum was invented by Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi, during the Civil War. He was inspired by tools used to pull bullets out of flesh. The insane theory that women cannot feel our cervixes can be traced to Kinsey. It is time this idea goes the way of the equally insane theory that babies do not feel pain.
IUD insertion is a form of systematic sexual sadism. Women, including trans-identifying women seeking gender-affirming care, are required to be subjected to what is tantamount to sexual torture, on the logic that it might not hurt us. So it is better to gamble with our trauma and avoid potential medication issues. We have to prove to them that it hurts us enough being stabbed in our genitals, before we are given pain management for genital surgery. And then they want to give .25mcg at a time while you beg for a therapeutic dose that takes into account your obvious severe pain and chronic pain patient status. Gender-affirming gynecologists also attempt to treat pain with only anxiety medication, a form of medical gaslighting and abuse. Pain is not the reaction to the pain. Yet the torture of women and girls continues, sometimes in the name of gender, and other times in the name of pregnancy prevention or treatment of endometriosis. It is simply unacceptable.
When I switched to Mirena IUD, I was told it would not act on the brain and would not lower my hormone levels or stop my hormonal cycling elsewhere in the body. It would just stop my period. I feared my dysphoria would return. When it did not return, I concluded that my gender dysphoria was mainly surrounding my period, regardless of hormone levels (something I concluded based on their claim my estrogen levels would normalize on the IUD). This contributed to me to start identifying as non-binary. At that time I believed that, to be trans meant you really did need to be on the opposite-sex hormones and not on your own hormones. I now label this model of what is trans, as Our Lady of the Perpetual Hormone Replacement Therapy. It was during this era that I coined Exulansic and began using it on social media as my church name.
I should not have listened to the people attempting to impose this binary gender system onto detrans people. Detrans people are those who have previously come out as trans and engaged in any behaviors performing that trans identification, and then recanted the identity. I do not agree that an ex-trans person who changed their name or legal sex, but did nothing medically, is a “desister.” I do not agree that people who blasted their HPG-axis with Depo Provera instead of Lupron Depot are “desisters.” I do not agree that women who had top surgery but not testosterone are “desisters.”
The word “desister” does not describe people who were socially affirmed and acting out a socially acquired theory of their distress, in my view. But, I understand why someone would choose to use desister for themselves, to be clear they have not been physically harmed by gender-affirming care, and that is their choice. Using “desister” to say someone’s transition “didn’t count” after the fact, when the person imposing the label has no actual idea what medical consequences of medicalization this person may find out about in the future, is not appropriate. It is a tactic of coercive control.
I hope other detransitioned women will stand up to these “insisters.” If we accept and facilitate the narrative that Depo Provera “doesn’t count” as transition medicine because “other women take it for other reasons,” what are we setting detransitioners suing providers up for? We are handing pharmaceutical companies and doctors a way for the defendants to say, it was not transition care that caused this. It was the Depo Provera. So, it does not count.
My position is that if the drug is being given in the name of gender, it is gender-affirming care. People harmed by gender-affirming care are detransitioners. Detransitioners should have a complete ability to seek financial compensation for all of their injuries. We were lied to about the cause of and solution to our difficulties. We were told gender gremlins exist, when they had no evidence of gender gremlins being real. We were told it was transition or suicide. I wanted to survive. I trusted a doctor. I followed medical advice. That is what we are supposed to do! My statute of limitations has passed, so it is a moot point for me, but I will not undermine another detransitioner’s litigation.
Detrans people are often still trying to put the pieces of their own broken life together, and are as a rule, more vulnerable to manipulation than a typical person, which is how we ended up in this predicament. There is an upcoming wave of litigation, and monied interests seeking to undermine and discourage detransitioners from coming forward. It is no coincidence what they say matches the TRAs: we were “never really trans.” We must not bend to it.
I never should have tried to meet the insisters half-way. I am an agreeable person and I want to say accurate things. They seemed reasonable, informed, and confident. However, that was before I learned more about what was done to me, how I had been lied to in the past, and how I have been physically harmed. I recant my previous rhetoric, in light of all this new information about medical harms I experienced as a result of medical intervention for my belief I was a trans man. I am a detransitioner. I’m not a desister. Transmedicalization harmed me inside and out, visibly and invisibly, physically and mentally, socially and spiritually. And I will continue to tell my story and name my pain.
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